Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Are you a researcher or an artist interested in: 1) Exploring how artistic practices are constructed and come to be regarded as ‘tradition’? Or 2) Studying the changing practices in the contemporary arts?

Scope

This grant programme supports scholars/researchers and artists to undertake research and documentation projects falling under the following themes:

1) Research and documentation that critically examines how artistic traditions are constructed or reinvented.

The word ‘tradition’ comes from the Latin word traditionem, which literally means ‘handing over’. What is handed over from one generation to the next may be knowledge, beliefs, legends, practices and so on. Tradition can also refer to long established ways of thinking or acting within a continuing pattern of cultural beliefs or practices.

However, because tradition provides a powerful source of endorsement and sanction for certain practices, beliefs, values and norms of behaviour, it is often invented or reconstructed, as against simply inherited. Many practices which are seen as tradition are in fact quite recent inventions, often deliberately constructed for a variety of reasons, such as to legitimize certain actions, power equations or social hierarchies, to foster group cohesion and cement collective identities, or to support political ideologies, agendas or interests. Artistic traditions are also deliberately re-described and reinvented to create new audiences and markets for them.

Support under this theme is available for researchers or artists who are interested in studying why or how traditions are constructed. For example, you may be interested in examining the new meanings, values and symbols that are created when a tradition is invented or reinvented or what might be excluded, lost, concealed or suppressed in the process. You may be interested in how this phenomenon alters the relationship between the artist, the art form/practice and the context of its production and reception. Or you may be interested in looking at the influences and ideologies that underlie or determine such constructions of tradition.

2) Research and documentation that seeks to study new developments in contemporary arts practice.

As a researcher or artist, you may want to study new developments or changing practices in the contemporary arts. For instance, you may want to study the intersection of technology––television and the Internet––and contemporary art. You may want to investigate site-specific work that engages with local communities or the natural environment. Or you may want to examine democratic art practices that blur the boundary between the artist and the audience.

You might want to use existing methods of research and/or create new conceptual or technical tools that depart from existing disciplinary methodologies to illuminate and contribute to the study of contemporary arts practices.

Application

IFA staff would be glad to answer your questions regarding this grant programme. You are welcome to approach us to discuss your ideas or send us a draft proposal for our suggestions and comments by or before June 15th, 2011.

Your final applications should be in hard copy and reach us no later than July 15th 2011. You can expect grant awards to be announced by October 2011.

You may choose to write your proposal in any Indian language including English.

Your project may have a minimum duration of twelve months and a maximum duration of eighteen months.

You can request for support up to Rs 3 lakh. If you are a filmmaker, you can request for support up to Rs 5 lakh.

You may budget for an honorarium not exceeding Rs 1,44,000 for the entire duration of the grant. Please note that the total grant amount is inclusive of the honorarium.

To apply, please send us a proposal describing:

a) The specific artistic tradition(s) OR contemporary art practice that you seek to research and/or document.

b) The research questions central to your project.

c) The research methodology that you seek to follow and/or new methodologies that you wish to pursue in order to tackle your subject of inquiry.

d) The anticipated duration of your project, as well as a work plan.

e) The proposed outcomes of your project.

The proposal will be considered incomplete if you do not include the following:

a) Supporting material, if any, which gives us a sense of your work.

b) Your bio-data.

c) A detailed budget breakdown that explains how funds will be used. Please also mention funds anticipated from other sources, if any.

d) Your address, telephone/fax numbers, and e-mail address.

e) If you are applying on behalf of an institution, please include background information on the organization as well as the memorandum of association/trust deed, annual reports, and audited statements of accounts for the past three years.

General Information

1) Our funds will cover only project-related personnel costs, activities and travel, and can provide for modest equipment and materials, if necessary. Please ensure that each budget category pertains to a specific item of project-related expenditure.

2) If you are an individual, please budget for an accountant.

3) Please do not budget for institutional overheads, building costs and infrastructural development.

4) Please do not make your identity evident in the text of the proposal.

5) You can send us your draft proposal by email but your final proposal, including your supporting material should be in hard copy only, and should reach us no later than July 15th 2011.

6) You are responsible for the delivery of your proposal and supporting material to IFA by the closing date. Late applications will not be accepted for consideration.

7) If your proposal is short-listed, you may be requested to respond to evaluations.

8) Your proposal will be assessed with the help of external evaluators, and IFA’s decision on grants will be final.

Eligibility

You are eligible to apply if you are an Indian national, a registered non-profit Indian organization, or have been resident in India for at least five years.

Please address your application and all other communication to:

Anuja Ghosalkar,

Programme Executive

India Foundation for the Arts,

‘Apurva’, Ground floor, No 259,

4th Cross, Raj Mahal Vilas, 2nd Stage, 2nd Block,

Bengaluru-560 094

Tel: 080 23414681/82

E-mail: anujaghosalkar@indiaifa.org

For more information visit http://www.indiaifa.org/article.asp?id=422&viewType=online

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Sotheby’s sale of Modern & Contemporary South Asian Art on 25 March 2011 will include Rabindranath Tagore’s Death Scene, a remarkable painting which was once in the collection of Mildred and William Archer (est. $300/500,000). The Archer Tagore is the most widely illustrated and exhibited work by the artist ever to appear on the auction market and was included in the artist’s first ever painting exhibition in India in 1932. The late William and Mildred Archer were two remarkable scholars who played a key role in bringing Indian Art to the fore and raising its profile on the international stage.
Tagore Exhibition in Kolkata

Call for Submissions: Open Platform at ART HK 11

Application Deadline: 12pm (HKT), 11 April 2011

Hong Kong, 21 March 2011 – Asia Art Archive (AAA) announces the call for submissions for 'Open Platform', inviting cultural producers and organisers to submit proposals for 28-minute presentations to be held during ART HK 11, the Hong Kong International Art Fair. ‘Open Platform’ is a new initiative within Backroom Conversations, the discursive component of ART HK organised by AAA.

The parametres for presentation content are wide-reaching and can include anything from lectures and performances to the introduction of art projects, books, workshops, and beyond.

A panel of judges consisting of editors from international art magazines will select four presentations for 'Open Platform', based on diversity of content, originality, format, and relevance to today’s world. AAA will provide a publicly accessible platform for these presentations during the fair and support necessary costs such as projectors, a basic stereo system, and publicity along with ‘Backroom Conversations’. Chosen projects will be awarded up to US$1,500 to support other related costs. Panel judges include Negar Azimi (Bidoun), Michelle Kuo (ArtForum), Andrew Maerkle (ARTit), Elaine Ng (ArtAsiaPacific), and Mark Rappolt (Art Review).

The deadline for submissions is 12pm (HKT), 11 April 2011. Successful applicants will be contacted via email by the end of April and announced on AAA’s website in the beginning of May.

‘AAA is committed to supporting new ideas that generate dialogue in the field,’ says Claire Hsu, AAA Executive Director. ‘We hope that Open Platform will give voice to ideas that demanded to be heard, here and now.’

Sotheby’s and The Economist would like to invite you to a discussion between Rashid Rana, one of South Asia’s foremost contemporary artists and Pooja Sood, Director Of Khoj, an International Artists' Association in New Delhi. The evening will be moderated by Ron Diorio, Vice president of product and community development at economist.com.

The discussion takes place during Asia Week New York and on the eve of the New York release of THE KHOJ BOOK, exclusively available for a limited time at Sotheby’s. This lavishly illustrated compendium contains five essays by eminent art critics and aesthetes, and features works and interviews with 101 Indian artists.

In Context:public.art.ecology- a four week residency at KHOJ Studios, hopes to investigate and explore sites of science pursued through its diverse art projects ranging from creating living ecosystems for insects, an organic grass photosynthesis photograph, an interactive bird habitat, an insect attracting eco- habitat; all within the broader framework of ecology and science rooted in todays’s cultural and philosophical context.

Talwar Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of new works by Ranjani Shettar. Show till 30th April 2011.

Ephemeral yet distinct, between shadows and form, Shettar’s works permeate elusiveness and a refusal to be contained by simple categorization. Her materials yield to unfamiliar realizations, as in Stretch in which wood seems to have been molded like clay, while on the main level Scent of a Sound traverses the gallery space like an unruly fragrance encompassing it like a lingering melody. The organic forms constructed with steel and muslin float in mid air confronting the viewer as they enter, daring them to step inside and imbibe. Further, in Aureole - a multi piece cast bronze silhouette of a threshold sweeps across the space gracefully defying materiality and weight while drawing from a millennium old tradition. Lagoon, laden with lush, rich and dense forms created from lacquered wood immersed in depths of blue, is indulgent and inviting.

Shettar's use of traditional and modern crafts to sculpt natural and industrial materials accentuates the tenuous relationship between industry and nature. She resolves this by uncovering the beauty within their co existence and in the collaboration between man and nature. In creating environments with sculpture and installation, Shettar fuses the two realms together with dynamic yet graceful forms and textures, revealing the spectacle and magnanimity of natural phenomena. Seduced by their simplicity and openness, our experience of her works yields humility and a surrender to their splendor.

Her work has been on view in numerous significant institutions and exhibitions worldwide. It can currently be seen at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NY in On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) (2009), The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2008-9) and The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston, MA (2008). Other exhibitions include 10th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (2010); 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2008), 9th Lyon Biennial, France (2007), 8th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah (2007), and 15th Sydney Biennale, Australia (2006). In 2006 Shettar was an Artist-in-Residence at Artpace, San Antonio, TX. In 2005, her works were on view at Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio and Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX and in 2003 at The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN. Later this year her solo exhibitions will be held at Fondation d'entreprise Hermès, Singapore and at The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.

She received a Bachelors (1998) and a Masters (2000) in Sculpture from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore. The artist lives and works in Karnataka, India.

International Art Contest - March 14 Entry Deadline

ust one last reminder: March 14 is the last day to enter the 26th Chelsea International Fine Art Competition. Visual artists 18 years of age and older from all over the world are invited to take advantage of this unique opportunity and submit their original work.

Click here to enter or complete your entry

For more information, visit http://www.agora-gallery.com/competition/default.aspx or email: competition@agora-gallery.com

Please note: As our newly designed entry process has proven to be easy, user-friendly and efficient, we will not be extending the deadline this year.

ART COLOGNE 2011: 13-17 April 2011

NEW POSITIONS showcases 20 young innovative artists

‘NEW POSITIONS’, ART COLOGNE’s sponsorship programme for young, innovative artists, was launched in 1980. The programme offers young artists selected by a panel of experts free exhibition stands of 25 square metres. The stands for the young artists adjoin the stands of the galleries representing them. This year’s selection panel has singled out twenty young artists. There will be a special prize – the Audi Art Award for NEW POSITIONS – for the best young artist. The prizewinner will be given a solo show at the Cologne artothek. The award also includes the publication of a catalogue. The package is worth EUR 10,000. The award ceremony will be held at ART COLOGNE at 3.00 pm on Friday, 15 April 2011. ‘The sponsorship programme brings the artists and their galleries a huge amount of public exposure,’ emphasizes Klaus Gerrit Friese, the chairman of the Bundesverband Deutscher Galerien und Editionen (BVDG). The programme is supported by the German Federal Government, the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Koelnmesse GmbH and the BVDG. ART COLOGNE runs from 13 to 17 April 2011.

The Light within: Paintings of Rabindranath

The Collective Studio will be presenting
The Light within: Paintings of Rabindranath

an illustrated lecture by Indrapramit Roy

on Saturday the 19th of March 2011 at 6 pm

venue: Surendran Nair's Studio

C-1 Oasis- Behind Essar Petrol Pump -Savli Road-Sama- Baroda

RSVP -98240 69767

#03 Pep Duran A Chain of Events
3 March - 5 June 2011
Capella MACBA

Firsthand Accounts @ AAA

Asia Art Archive (AAA) announces the Artist Residency with Seoul-based web art group Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries (YHCHI). The group will spend the month of March at the Archive as AAA's second International Artists-in-residence.

Among the first artists to employ the Internet as an artistic platform in the late 1990s, Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries consists of Marc Voge from the United States and Young-hae Chang from Korea. Their work, which can be viewed at www.yhchang.com, is presented in 17 languages, and is characterised by text-based animation synchronised to a musical score, often originally composed jazz. Rather than emphasising sophisticated uses of new technologies, YHCHI presents works that are directly engaging and effective, characterised by references to film and concrete poetry and by the scale and rapid pace at which the text appears.

During their residency at AAA, YHCHI will develop a new work as well as present a series of talks with the theme, I SAW YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES (OR DID I?). Their work will take as its point of departure the excavation of the history and structure of the Archive in the context of the contemporary art community in the region.
ANNE VILSBOLL at Ganges Art Gallery

Regarding Iran @ Guild Gallery, Mumbai

EXIT #41 ARTIFICIAL PARADISES. OTHER LANDSCAPES

ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART, London

Archival Research Fellowships @IFA

India Foundation for the Arts is pleased to announce four archival research fellowships of Rs. 1, 50,000/- each for a duration of one year. Artists and/or curators keen to enrich their practice through engaging in archival research and/or working with materials from the archive as part of a project/initiative in the arts are welcome to apply.

These fellowships are open to artists/curators who wish to work within public collections/archives only. Kindly note that those interested in applying must seek prior written permission from the institutions they wish to work with and submit a copy to IFA as part of their project proposal.

The Call for Applications with more details will be circulated on April 15th 2011.

The study of plants is directly linked to our knowledge of the world - to precise knowledge of a world that is real, though changing, and of particular places, generally characterised by differences that set them apart from the place from which they are observed. The earliest botanical studies reflect the need to carry out a detailed analysis of nature. Plants and flowers are immediately accessible: as the most static parts of nature they are relatively easy to study.

Simone Wille
Politics of Representation of Contemporary Art with an Islamic Background

Monday, 14th March 2011
5 pm onwards

FICA Reading Room
D-42 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024

In the last two decades a new concept on "modern Islamic art“ awoke. What is new and particularly disturbing is the way in which the objects of Islamic art are increasingly co-opted into an emergent (if embryonic) exhibitionary regime that not only aims to project a model of peaceful co-existence but to locate and provide an appropriate model of "Islam“ itself. (Finbarr Barry Flood (2007, p. 43)).

Simone Wille is an art historian currently living in Vienna, Austria. She has written a doctorial thesis on: "Contemporary Art from Pakistan. A Continual Process of Reconstructed Pasts and Anticipated Future". She was involved in several exhibitions; she curated and edited the exhibition catalogue of “Zeitsprünge, Raumfolgen", ifa Gallerie, Berlin and Stuttgart, Oct. 2005- May. 2006. Since 1999 Simone Wille has spent several months every year doing field work in Pakistan, interviewing artists and analysing their work, their agenda, working conditions and socio-cultural context. Besides her publications for exhibitions Simone is a regular contributor to the renowned Neue Zuercher Zeitung with articles on contemporary art from Iran, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. She regularly writes for Nukta Art in Pakistan and Universes in Universe.

MADRID FOTO 3 is back, engaging with contemporary photography at its purest

MADRID FOTO undertakes it third iteration May 5th through 8th at IFEMA Pavillion Number 1, an open space with more than 5,000 m2 for exhibitors. As many as seventy international galleries, publishing houses and journals will participate in MADRIDFOTO3, the only international contemporary photography fair held in Spain.

After the success of its first two shows, in 2011 MADRIDFOTO will boast the presence of seventy international galleries, publishing houses and magazines. The fair, created to promote photography with special emphasis on the contemporary, strives to foster new private, corporate and institutional collecting in our country. This year's fair will again be held in the venue where it was launched, IFEMA Pavillion 1, a space that the architect Andrés Jaque is designing especially for the occasion. Stands, corridors, rest areas and VIP areas are conceived to enhance the pieces on display and make visits comfortable and pleasant for viewers. For its promotion MADRIDFOTO3 counts on three extraordinary ambassadors: Timothy Persons (promoter of the Helsinki School of Photography and Artistic Director of TAIK Gallery of Helsinki/Berlin), Baudoin Lebon (owner of the Galerie Baudoin Lebon of Paris) and Pilar Citoler (collector and patron of the Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofía of Madrid).

Sotheby's To Sell The Pearl Canopy Of Baroda on 24 March in New York

On 24 March 2011, Sotheby’s New York will present The Pearl Canopy Of Baroda, one of the most luxuriant works of art ever created.

The magnificent bejeweled canopy, which will be offered in the Indian & Southeast Asian Works of Art auction, is one of the highlights of Sotheby’s Asia week series of sales. The canopy is entirely embroidered with natural ‘Basra’ pearls and lush floral vines made up of coloured glass beads enhanced by diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds. The number of ‘Basra’ pearls alone totals over 500,000. The work had been hidden from public view for over 100 years until it was included in the exhibition Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London last year.

The canopy was commissioned by the Maharaja of Baroda, Khande Rao Gaekwar and was made circa 1865-70. It was created as part of an ensemble which included the famed Pearl Carpet of Baroda which was sold at Sotheby’s Doha in March 2009. The suite was originally made up of four rectangular bejeweled carpets and this circular canopy. Of the five pieces, only these two survive. The Pearl Canopy Of Baroda is estimated to fetch $3/5 million.